Dear model railroading friends.

We are doing some maintenance to our Consolidated Nickel Mines layout. We also did some repairs and improvement to our landscape, adding some plants. This latter operation went in line with our “zero cost” philosophy.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/91867668@N07/42649197712/

A mere band-aid to a bigger issue

I recently received Rapido's SW1200RS: this is a beautiful model that is fun to operate and sounds great. Unfortunately, as soon as you start doing some slow-speed switching and you hit a dead frog the locomotive stutters to a stop. While this doesn't happen consistently it happens consistently on those particular frogs. It's in Rapido's hands right now.

Dear modeling friends.

Using pieces from our junk pile, we built (finally) our rail-cleaning railcar. To be noted, in our Consolidated Nickel layout, we have a 1.5-meter tunnel section, which is almost inaccessible. We have retrieved an old Metaltrain flatcar (a one-piece solid, heavy block of die-cast alloy). We have machined two pieces of thin stainless steel sheet (origin: old 3.25-inch PC diskettes), and installed them under our flatcar.

Thanks for the Image help everyone.  My first direct post, and I am on a LINUX machine.  Anyway, I wanted to share the highway overpass I'm scratch building.  The paint to still a bit wet, but I'm pretty happy with the overall results.

Any idea why, when I paste a .jpg image here, it displays upside down?

Well, not really for sale, the most important point is Jimmy is moving on.

Watch for all the info

Visited the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad the last couple days.  I highly recommend it.  Very railfan friendly, and feels like its an active RAILROAD rather than a tourist ride.  I will post some pix as I get them organized.

http://cumbrestoltec.com/

So you are interested in getting a laser cutter-engraver, and you are wondering about what dose it take to scratch build a building. Here is the first in a series of videos that I show how I do it. I am not an expert but have built a few buildings. The first part of the video is on researching buildings and a look at drawing one out to be cut.

Part two will be about engraving textures and how the laser understands the drawing.

Part three will be on what I learned about the laser and what I would look for in buying one. I will also show how to set up for a cut. 

Hope this is helpful for someone looking at this subject and I share what I have learned so far.

I made this video way back in 2014. I first made and started using these stains in 2008. This video contains insights into how experienced wood modelers make a stronger stain to be able to work faster. 

Warning, these recipes are used actively by me in my work. They do require some practice to make sure you know how they will affect your modeling. Personal experimentation with these solutions are a requirement, especially for newer modelers.